T. Parker: Black Water

"And his CDL said what?"

"Steve Charles. But the burns and his accent made me think, we ran the name through the Feds and came up with Sergei Cherbrenko. He's a gangster. Dobbs heard it at the morning roll and call you guys."

Yes, Dobbs again. Marching through the automatic doors of the hospital entrance Merci wondered: how could one formerly host Deputy 1 get so lucky? He'd spotted Cherbrenko and Vorapin coming down the hill from the Wildcraft home. He'd found the abandoned STS Cadillac they'd used. Now, he'd smelled the connection between a freshly blinded man wandering the Ortega and the murder of Gwen Wildcraft.

She was suspicious of fortune this good. She wondered if Dobbs might be connected up with the Russians, might be running interference for them. How? By ID'ing them in the car, and sealing off the STS crime scene like a pro? Idiotic. Maybe he was fingering them for a rival. Maybe the sun would rise blue next Tuesday. Was she still pissed about him not protecting the Wildcraft driveway?

Gad, woman, she thought: you'd shoot an angel out of the sky to make sure she was real.

And the problem here wasn't that Deputy Dobbs had made a nice leap from Cherbrenko to Gwen. The problem was that Deputy Wildcraft had probably tortured him.

"Road flares?" she asked.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Maxwell. "Well, actually, I have, in college. The end of one of those old tragedies, where they put the guy's eyes out."

"But he wouldn't tell you who did it?" asked Zamorra.

"No. He just blubbered and cried. Does this have to do with Archie?"

"We're about to find out."

Cherbrenko lay in the burn unit with his head and face wrapped in white gauze and his hands in wrist restraints. His fingers were cupped and still. His pale hair was bunched behind the bandage, loose as a pile of straw.

"He's on a strong painkiller and sedative," said the doctor. He referred to Cherbrenko as if he was absent but would be back soon. "He can answer your questions if he wishes. Do not be surprised if he falls asleep."

Rayborn stood and looked down at the gauze mask. There were no eyeholes. She thought she should be quiet, but the doctor hadn't been. She wondered what it would be like to have roaring road flares be the last thing you ever saw in your life.

She told him who she was. The mask moved slightly to the right, toward her. A sigh elongated from the nose opening but that was all.

"You're Sergei Cherbrenko and you worked for OrganiVen, she said. "Gwen Wildcraft worked there with you."

No movement, no sound. The head moved again, but away her this time.

Then a sigh and a soft whisper. "Wildcraft. "

"Did he do this to you?"

"Yes."

"What did he want?"

"Facts."

"Of?"

"Murder."

"Of Gwen, his wife."

"Yes."

Rayborn thought she knew why Archie had done this, but wanted to hear it from Cherbrenko. "He said he'd let you go if you told him who did it and how it happened."

A nod.

"You told him."

Another.

"And the truth is, you didn't do it."

"No, I did not."

Merci tried to square her knowledge of Archie Wildcraft against the hideous thing he had done to the man below her. She understood murder but not mutilation. It took her a moment to find the logic. "Deputy Wildcraft didn't kill you. You told him you didn't shoot her, and he believed you, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Because it was Vorapin who shot her. And Archie."

No reply. Her mind raced ahead through the possibilities, tasting and rejecting, moving on.

"You told him it was Vorapin."

"No. We did nothing."

"But Archie did this to you anyway?"

Just a whisper: "He told me I would never drive a car again

He was right about that, Merci thought. And she realized why Wildcraft had done what he had done. There was only one more thing he could have wanted. "He let you live because he wanted something from you. And you gave it to him."

A nod.

"And you understand, don't you, Mr. Cherbrenko, that if you tell me what you told him, there's a good chance we can get to Zlatan before Wildcraft does."

"Yes."

"Where is he? Where's Vorapin?"

It was a long time before Cherbrenko answered. The fingers on both his hands slowly opened and closed, then clenched into fists.

"His private house."

"The Fullerton house, with Irene?"

"No. His other."

"What's the address, Mr. Cherbrenko? Help me save your friend something worse than what happened to you."

Another pause. Cherbrenko lay still as a dead man, his fingers again open and relaxed on his tethered hands.

"We did nothing."

"I believe you. Now give me the address."

"Two-two-seven Palacio. Newport Beach."

Zamorra broke for the door but Merci waited. Another light went on: friends don't let friends die. "The nurse dialed his number for you."

Another nod.

"Was he home?"

"No."

"You left him a message."

"Yes. I told him to call the police and let them handle this mistake."

"I'll bet you did."

"This is true."

"And what else?"

"To pull out his eyes and step on them. "

"You're a sweetheart, Sonny. You two killed her because you thought she was going to blow the whistle on you about the MiraVen."

"We did nothing."

Rayborn and Zamorra made the Newport Beach address in half an hour. Palacio was up in the hills off of Coast Highway, servicing Villagio, one of the new Italianate developments. The homes were built in clusters of three, which allowed them to face away from each and into the tan canyons.

Vorapin's address had a courtyard and garage behind a gate. The gate was closed but the garage was open. She could see the back end of a clean black car and that was it.

They walked to the gate and looked through the wrought-iron rail. Merci noted the chrome-heavy back end of the Lincoln Town Car and the livery plates, the Air Glide plate frame.

"He's home," she said.

"You want to camp or knock?"

"I'll knock."

She popped the snap on her hip leather and drew the Heckler amp; Koch, holding it down against her leg as she walked around the courtyard wall and into the narrow cones of shade cast by three cypresses. The front door was recessed and rounded at the top, with iron bands bolted to the timbers top and bottom. The knock black iron, heavy and warm against her fingers.

One rap, two, nothing.

Three, four, nothing.

She tried the doorbell next but it chimed back with distance and emptiness.

Then again.

Then back to Zamorra, shaking her head, her nerves buzzing, the nine tapping against her thigh.

Zamorra jumped the gate with the bored grace of a cat and hit the manual opener. It slid open and Rayborn angled in, taking the left of the walkway while her partner took the right. Into the dappled shade of the courtyard and the spicy aroma cypresses. The walkway made an elegant curve toward the house and that was where they found Vorapin, facedown and motionless in of blood, holes gaping from the back of his head, the upper middle of his suit coat and the center of his buttocks.

Merci stared at him, figuring the high hump of his back would come about to her knees. Why would God make a man that big?

Vorapin groaned and Merci felt her heart leap into the sky. He coughed a mouthful of black blood onto the pavers.

"Oh, Damn," she said, staring down the sights of the automatic, which had reflexively jumped into her sightline.

Vorapin's fingers tightened and slid. His cratered, misshapen head rose and wobbled, like he was a baby trying to crawl. He turned a little, just enough to curse Rayborn with one magnificent, furious eye.

Then he blew another storm of blood, gave an enormous animal shudder and his head landed with a heavy wet crunch.

For just a moment Merci couldn't hold thoughts. They swam at her dreamily, only to vanish like spooked tarpon in a bright silver sea. Then her attention refocused with blazing clarity on the soles of Zlatan Vorapin's gigantic shoes.